Originally posted by frkhot97 I got my collectors box today and WOW the game is demanding on the hardware. I'll have top turn everything down to lowest settings...
I must say, my formidable gaming rig (Pentium 4 3.4 Ghz with 2 GB DDR RAM and ATI Radeon X1900 512MB) runs this game at max settings however there are some parts of the game that would pause for a split second and the camera is slow and klunky. A very obvious sign that the game isn't optimized well for release and probably got rushed out for the holidays.
. . And last are your characters saved on some kinda server or local... if local do they have any way of stopping people from cheating?You can always save your character local. But servers save copies of your character independantly - so as you already read - there is a solid way to enforce legit characters If so is wanted. Persistant worlds always force you to play YOUR character stored on their server. But if i for example run adventure for my buddies , i let them bring their characters - because i know they wont cheat.
Thank you in advance if anyone has the answers to my questions, the answers will ffect whether or not I buy this game.
Rattrap I understand your comment:
You can always save your character local. But servers save copies of your character independantly - so as you already read - there is a solid way to enforce legit characters If so is wanted. Persistant worlds always force you to play YOUR character stored on their server. But if i for example run adventure for my buddies , i let them bring their characters - because i know they wont cheat.
but if this is the case, Lets say I save my character offline and my byte size, character file, or whatever makes the snapshot of my character is also server saved independantly.
Now, I come to your adventure that you run for your buddies and I aquire anything, anything at all, even if my position changes in my save file, I am no longer in sync with my independantly saved character file on the servers.
How could they even hope know whether I moved, looted, quested, anything and it was not a hack?
Years, and I do mean years ago, with a borderland ansi c builder I could open my doom save game in hex format. Now I did this before everyone and their pet sheep decided to actually build a program around what I and many others did manually (im an old coder) we altered ...(edited: I removed what we did cuz I should not say
Now I am sure it is much harder today, we are talking almost what...16 years later.. database keys and encryption and all but the simply fact that the 2 files, mine saved offline and thiers saved online will not match leaves me wondering how they can enforce no hacking.
Blizzard with the Diablo series realized that characters saved locally could not play with characters that were always saved on their servers.
A locally saved character file that can be altered outside the knowledge of the online game servers can not be verified to have been legitimately created.
There must always be some type of internet connection to the game server about your character file even when you think you are playing standalone or the prevention of hacks will be an interesting task indeed.
I posted this earlier in Off-Topic but I figured it was relevant so thought I'd re-post it.
Well I've been playing NWN2 for a few days now and unfortunately, overall I'm fairly dissapointed. Even as an enthusiastic RPG and D&D fan, I really feel so much more could have been done with this game, which really seems to be Obsidians' calling card with the sequels they push out.
The single player module that comes packed with the game has been a decent amount of fun so far, theres an advertised 50 hours worth gameplay here if you include all the sidequests but I really don't see it. Your going to find the typical Quest driven arena in the game, most of which is fine as long you know what to expect. The quests are engaging, with lots of adventuresome twists and turns and a decent amount of variety which are generally well done, even if they aren't entirely original.
Where the game really falls flat is in the "little things" and technical departments.
The camera angles are not just bad, they are a complete disaster. Even during cutsceens when you go into a type of letter block view, quite often the camera angle completely misses the speaker or something comes along and pushes him/her out of the way. During actual playtime there's, I think, 4 seperate viewing distances but all of them seem completely ill suited for the purpose, eventually you'll figure out that the only viable soluation is the top down view which takes you so far away from the action you find yourself almost resentful and in itself can be a chore to deal with.
The controls are not much better either. Keymapping is an awkward affair as it can only be done before game bootup, and the standard controls, while functional, are tedious and very unintuitive. Handling your party is fairly straight up, unfortunately the AI department seems to have been taking a nap during meetings because quite often I would start to get beat on and my faithfull fallowers were off in their own little world oblivious to my welps for help. Better yet, they would get stuck and lag behind on one thing or another unable to reach without my pausing and taking control.
Then there's the hype about the new graphic engine, while the game certainly does not look bad, it's by no means spectacular. My rig far exceeds the recommended specs for the game. With an FX60, 7900GTX's in SLi and 4 gigs of ram, this game persisted in being a gigantic hog on resources and alot of tunning needs to be done to get a smooth running game. Which by the way, completely confuses me because as I said, the game doesn't look bad but it's by no means Oblivion or FEAR, both of which I top out easily with my rig.
The character modeling is ok but again, during those little conversation cut sceens (which usually implies it's of some importance), you can easily see fracturing, layering and low rez textures. There also seemed to be some sort texture shortage going on during the development of the game because you'll get to see alot of repetitiveness in the models used around the world. This to me is a big shame, in this day and age you would think that enough variety could be had in terms of modeling.
Partical effects and spacial affects on the other hand look really, really great and some can be very intricate and dramatic. Getting 3 spellcasters together can be a real lightshow gone mad but I love that kind of stuff, so while it may annoy some people, it's fun for players like me.
Oh and the sound... yeah this is a tricky one! The voice acting is OK, if not on the cheezy side in some instances but of course that's just the nature of the environment, not much you can do there. The music is pretty much all cut from the Original NWN, which I can appreciate to a certain degree because, after all, it is a NWN game. Still though, it would have been nice to hear some original scores to add some uniquness to the world. Same goes for the sound effects, lots of borrowing coming from the original game, which isn't all bad.
Besides the in game issues I did receive a couple of runtime errors during character creation and midway through a cutsceen, other then that it's been pretty stable.
So in the end, I can't really recomend this game to anyone just yet. The tricky part with NWN2 is that, just like NWN, it has alot of online features for people that want to create and experience personally made modules to play by yourself or with friends. Time will tell whether the sequel is as popular in this department as the first one was but one has to wonder, with a fistfull of engine issues, how likely is that.
Now it's quite possible that some good patches will take care of the issues at hand and I really hope it's done quickly and preciesly but over all the game feels very sloppy out of the box.
Sad...just sad I really wanted this game to be great but Dungeon Siege II is better IMO. There are times when the game just turns into a slideshow, like 3 to 4 fps. This is with shadows off and other options turned way down, on a P4 3ghz 2gb DDR ram and ATI 800xt vid card. I also susspect the game has a serious memory leak. I'm glad I DL'ed it to try it out before going out to buy it.
Well, after 2 days of playing non-stop (30 hours?), I got an opinion about it. NWN2 is nice, from a "solo point of view", it is better than the first. But there it stop.
I am having a blast (compare to other gaming experiences I have in the last years), the game is cool, but it has MANY flaws. Here are a few.
1- I feel like a spectator, the game is almost an action game and I watch. I don't feel like this is a real RPG, I don't know what my group is doing, and since they are doing relatively fine, I see no point in commanding them to improve them, since it involves using space bar...and using space bar was delicious in BG, but in a game that lag, using space bar is aggravating.
2- 3D is confusing, the camera is weird and definitely not intuitive. Often I miss treasures, not seeing them, even while using Z...until I pass a second time in another angle, this is not fun.
3- The story with the NPC is decent, but it feel...off. Dunno how I can explain it more. In BG, it was on mark...here...it feel off. The NPCs are interesting and all, but...something is missing. There are many links to NWN, however, they feel distant, far...doesn't feel close...as in Icewind Dale2 on this, nothing like BG.
However, the game is still nice, I am happy with my buy and doesn't regret it 1 moment. It is great fun. I will never even consider playing this game online with other players however. Guess I will be ready for Gothic 3, never tried any Gothic...about time I give them a chance I guess. But any D&D fan which think that NWN was barely acceptable and that ToEE was the last semi-decent release should give it a try and get the tolerance factor prepared, it is something too munch on. I won't play it a second time, but I will definitely finish it.
EDIT: It has the D&D feeling, unlike DDO. So to any D&D fan, they changed and twist a few rules, but overall, it keep a D&D feeling.
EDIT2: As for a rate, I would give it a 7/10...and I am a bit harsh. Maybe it deserve a little higher. Peoples who rate it lower prolly grant more importance to "what make average games" and too little to "what make a D&D game". They did a good job and give that D&D feeling, they respect the world, the rules, the feeling...If you are a D&D fan of the computers games for a long time, arm yourself with tolerance and enjoy...if you are a newcomer, it seem unlikely that this game will be for you.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Shae pretty much has the right of it. Pretty much everything she said I agree with. I by no means have a top of the line video card, but with my 7600GT I have been able to max out every game such as DDO, BF2, BF2142, and Company of Heroes. The only games I havent been able to max out at 1280 resolution are EQ2 and Oblivion...and they look a hell of a lot better than NWN2 does at a playable framerate.
If it wasn't for the fact that im enjoying the story, I probably wouldn't be playing this, at least until they get a few big patches out the door. Now the game does look nice and most of the time in a wilderness setting I can maintain 30 FPS, but once I hit a city or there are a bunch of people on the screen the FPS drops to 10-20 or even below. There is plenty of detail, but like Shae said its either fairly repetitive (the skins for barrels and chests, etc, seem to be exactly the same so far).
The voice acting is a nice touch and so far I think it adds a very nice touch to the game. Again like Shae said during the cut scenes the textures are low quality and I can see some tearing; the voice acting is what saves it here.
Besides the actual in game problems, I have read about issues with the packaging of the game. The LE editions are supposed to have a cloth map and spiral bound manual/artbook. I have read of many cases where there is a paper map and a ten page manual, no artbook or cloth map. Even the basic edition I bought is pretty sad compared to what the first NWN came like. Im looking in my original box right now and the basic NWN came with a nice cloth map, a shortcut/spell booklet, and an almost 200 page spiral bound manual. Today I opened the dvd version of NWN2 and it came with the disc in a cheap paper sleeve and a cheap manual. Not that I really blame the developers for this part, doesnt Atari handle the packaging?
So far I would rate this a 6/10. The gameplay is clunky but the graphics look fairly nice with a sometimes VERY poor framerate. The story so far has actually pulled me in and made me want to play. The presentation box wise was pretty poor. On the plus side the dev's had a patch out on release day I believe to correct some problems with the camera (still pretty clunky), so maybe thats a good sign that patches will come quickly and correct some of the many problems.
Originally posted by The-Raven but if this is the case, Lets say I save my character offline and my byte size, character file, or whatever makes the snapshot of my character is also server saved independantly.
Now, I come to your adventure that you run for your buddies and I aquire anything, anything at all, even if my position changes in my save file, I am no longer in sync with my independantly saved character file on the servers.
How could they even hope know whether I moved, looted, quested, anything and it was not a hack?
Years, and I do mean years ago, with a borderland ansi c builder I could open my doom save game in hex format. Now I did this before everyone and their pet sheep decided to actually build a program around what I and many others did manually (im an old coder) we altered ...(edited: I removed what we did cuz I should not say
Now I am sure it is much harder today, we are talking almost what...16 years later.. database keys and encryption and all but the simply fact that the 2 files, mine saved offline and thiers saved online will not match leaves me wondering how they can enforce no hacking.
Blizzard with the Diablo series realized that characters saved locally could not play with characters that were always saved on their servers.
A locally saved character file that can be altered outside the knowledge of the online game servers can not be verified to have been legitimately created.
There must always be some type of internet connection to the game server about your character file even when you think you are playing standalone or the prevention of hacks will be an interesting task indeed.
Let me explain this better
Asume that you play two diferent online NWN2 modules
1. Persistant World called "Walker the Cormyr ranger" 2. Mini adventure you downloaded from nwn vault called "Rattraps deadly dungeons"
No1 is runned from server in Munich agriculture university, while no2 you run from your (or buddies comp)
Now you played no1 for a month and have character level 10 , you press "export my character key" play some more , reach lvl 11 and log out.
Now you want to play "Rattraps deadly dungeons" with your buddy. You start the game and chose the character that you saved locally and start playing. You reach lvl 20 in 2 minutes and get the "sword of insanely easy slaying of everything"...wow!
You log back to no1 and find that your character is the same as it was when you left - level 11 with crappy sword.
So you see , it depends on the module you play. And cheating is near to impossible or very possible - depending on server...
People always wondered about that in NWN1. You can enter the module and DM can weawe his magic wand and *pop* you are level 20 with 20 mil gold. But what is it good when you can use it only on local server allowed games ...
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
I want to adress some of sad reviews posters (all of them very respected members of mmorpg comunity) posted so far about this game.
First off you must understand that I expected this game to litteraly be "one to rule them all" ... well it isnt
In graphic department it is almost good but not awsome - but comes with insanely demanding engine (think eq2)
- good news is that you can scale effects down , and you will not miss that much. Also for some strange reason game works better on worse computers ?!
Camera control is simply horrible , and the thing people are not writting about - the walls in dungeons are not getting transparent, so they constantly block your wiew
Companions have the poorest AI in the world, and so do the monsters.
Disapointing. So why play it then?
When NWN1 came out it had its share of problems too. And ironically the camera problem is exactly the same. And still 6 years from now it is best sold PC game of all times, with largest community in the world.
Although we all expected NWN2 to blow nwn1 out of the room. Well that didnt happen. But still it is NWN2 and it is bringing LOT OF IMPROVEMENTS
When you play NWN2 you can clearly see the vast potential in hand of MODers. I am sure in one month from now when mods start coming out , the game will be insane. That said , i belive NWN2 tends to gravitate towards single player rather than mp.
But in sp it is king. I can not remember rpg that locked me down to the pc like this since Baldurs Gate, or Kotor
D&D 3.5 rules are excelently implemented to the point i might say the best implementation of D&D on PC ever take that DDO boyz) if you like D&D - there is no way in world you shold miss this game!
If you like PC rpg games this is excelent game , however if you want hack and slash you better skip this game.
Again , i cannot comment on MP - we will just have to wait and see
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
My worry is that because the system specs are so high, the MP community will be fairly small, and this will have a real detrimental impact on that side of the game. NWN was primarily a phenomenon due to the polayer-made MP modules and such, and if not that many people can run the game well, that kind of phenomenon developing here is much less likely.
Many people complain that the hardware demands of this product are too high and even their Machine configurations match them, they get too low frame rate and many bugs like interface prevent a smooth experience.
A lot of this has been mentioned before, but after playing it over the last couple days, i can say that my main gripes are:
Camera control. I love moving the mouse to the edges of the screen to rotate the camera, but in NWN2 it is too slow. Way too slow. Way, way too slow. In the first NWN you could adjust the sensitivity so that merely "tapping" the edge of the screen with the cursor would spin the camera 180 degrees around your character. They need to implement this asap. Holding down the middle mouse button to rotate the camera is extremely clumsy. I have had to resort to binding camera control to wasd (and i hate wasd).
Graphics. The graphics are good but do not live up to the system requirements. Like someone else said, particle effects look great but everything else is average. I think the character models are below average. Character animations are clumsy, ackward, jerky, and unnatural.
The interface. I feel that NWN1 had a clean, polished, minimalist interface. Not so much with NWN2. There doesn't appear to be a lot of aesthetic/visual consistency between windows. There is a LOT of wasted space between text that blocks the main view. I miss the narrow, monochromatic black and tan/gold interface from NWN1. I miss the main menu with your character portrait. I don't like the buttons in the bottom left of the screen.
All in all, i'm having a hard time staying focused on this game. Once i load up and get going in NWN2, i immediately start to think about all the little things in NWN1 that i took for granted. And then i realize that i'd rather be spending my time playing the first one.
And where would you recommend we "try before you buy"? Was there a demo that I missed? Or if your talking about downloading a torrent then you would have the whole game already and wouldn't need to buy unless you wanted to be able to play multiplayer.
If you are having performance issues try lowering your view distance to half of max. For some reason the game automatically sets the view distance to max, this causes the game to chug like a mofo. I lowered it from 300 to about 250 and noticed a huge improvement, I was able to turn on a bunch more stuff and the view distance is still pretty good.
Originally posted by Anofalye Originally posted by gestalt11 If the story is good I will play it, but not until I have done a lot of stuff in GW: nightfall.
Strange that it sounds like Nightfall has better storytelling than what people are saying NWN2 has. Or at least maybe just technically better?
But Jeff Grub did write the Nightfall storyline, old school baby, yeah.
The story is good...hmm, maybe even great! Good the rest I don't really care about. It amazes me when people complain about graphics and then say BG was a better game or whatever because the graphics on NWN2 are sub-par or whatever.
NWN1 camera bugged me too, I wasn't expecting super smooth gameplay, but it sounds like the henchies are more fleshed out and that the story is at least good.
For real time play I would never consider playing NWN2 over a a game like GW but I like the pause and do stuff gameplay of BG and NWN. Especially BG as NWN was frankly way too easy and far less tactical.
D&D is a fine system but , even though I have the entirety of the original Monster manual 2 commited to memeory, its not something I get really jazzed about. Monster Manual 2 was good bathroom reading. I like the Guild Wars system better actually for a CRPG so NWN2 was a bit of a side thing what with NF out 3 days earlier. Which is strange since usually the online systems are worse.
Either way I have read literally 100s and 100s of fantasy books and I approach RPGs the same way, decent plot with stuff to do that gets me involved and I will like it. It'll be a nice diversion once I get aroudn to it. As long as the technical issues aren't just plain frustrating.
Guild Wars is technically superior to NWN2 in that it runs much, much more smoothly on more systems. It isn't quite as in-depth in terms of the story, of course, but that's where the two games differ: GW offers PvP beyond the story, and NWN2 is about people producing their own content. In many ways when I am playing NWN2 I am thinking that I am playing what is essentially a more extensive version of a player-made module, rather than a true standalone game ... it certainly plays like that.
Originally posted by NewMonster Originally posted by timmy12 I know this isnt a Mmorpg but i was just woundering whos going to but it towmarrow lol? for the vote but is Buy*
hello timmy.... never winter nights 2 is a mmorpg
never winter nights 1 is a action-rpg diablo-type
never winter nights 2 will transform into mmorpg jus like dungeons and dragons online
t will transform into an MMO just like DDO? Well that's certainly disappointing!
NWN2 is not going to be a Mmorpg so STFU becuase u dont know what ur talking about. NWN2 is a game were poeple make there own servers. its not a MMORPG ok? its never going to be one
I really liked NWN1, although I never got into it because I bought it so long after it came out, and I never really figured it out and got addicted properly before it got boring for me. Good game still though, and I am looking forward to trying NWN2, although I dont think my computer will be able to handle it so I might not get to try it for a very long time, when I get a new compie
Comments
I must say, my formidable gaming rig (Pentium 4 3.4 Ghz with 2 GB DDR RAM and ATI Radeon X1900 512MB) runs this game at max settings however there are some parts of the game that would pause for a split second and the camera is slow and klunky. A very obvious sign that the game isn't optimized well for release and probably got rushed out for the holidays.
Rattrap I understand your comment:
You can always save your character local. But servers save copies of your character independantly - so as you already read - there is a solid way to enforce legit characters
If so is wanted. Persistant worlds always force you to play YOUR character stored on their server. But if i for example run adventure for my buddies , i let them bring their characters - because i know they wont cheat.
but if this is the case, Lets say I save my character offline and my byte size, character file, or whatever makes the snapshot of my character is also server saved independantly.
Now, I come to your adventure that you run for your buddies and I aquire anything, anything at all, even if my position changes in my save file, I am no longer in sync with my independantly saved character file on the servers.
How could they even hope know whether I moved, looted, quested, anything and it was not a hack?
Years, and I do mean years ago, with a borderland ansi c builder I could open my doom save game in hex format. Now I did this before everyone and their pet sheep decided to actually build a program around what I and many others did manually (im an old coder) we altered ...(edited: I removed what we did cuz I should not say
Now I am sure it is much harder today, we are talking almost what...16 years later.. database keys and encryption and all but the simply fact that the 2 files, mine saved offline and thiers saved online will not match leaves me wondering how they can enforce no hacking.
Blizzard with the Diablo series realized that characters saved locally could not play with characters that were always saved on their servers.
A locally saved character file that can be altered outside the knowledge of the online game servers can not be verified to have been legitimately created.
There must always be some type of internet connection to the game server about your character file even when you think you are playing standalone or the prevention of hacks will be an interesting task indeed.
Important Information regarding Posting and You
I sleep with a pillow under my gun.
Well, after 2 days of playing non-stop (30 hours?), I got an opinion about it. NWN2 is nice, from a "solo point of view", it is better than the first. But there it stop.
I am having a blast (compare to other gaming experiences I have in the last years), the game is cool, but it has MANY flaws. Here are a few.
1- I feel like a spectator, the game is almost an action game and I watch. I don't feel like this is a real RPG, I don't know what my group is doing, and since they are doing relatively fine, I see no point in commanding them to improve them, since it involves using space bar...and using space bar was delicious in BG, but in a game that lag, using space bar is aggravating.
2- 3D is confusing, the camera is weird and definitely not intuitive. Often I miss treasures, not seeing them, even while using Z...until I pass a second time in another angle, this is not fun.
3- The story with the NPC is decent, but it feel...off. Dunno how I can explain it more. In BG, it was on mark...here...it feel off. The NPCs are interesting and all, but...something is missing. There are many links to NWN, however, they feel distant, far...doesn't feel close...as in Icewind Dale2 on this, nothing like BG.
However, the game is still nice, I am happy with my buy and doesn't regret it 1 moment. It is great fun. I will never even consider playing this game online with other players however. Guess I will be ready for Gothic 3, never tried any Gothic...about time I give them a chance I guess.
But any D&D fan which think that NWN was barely acceptable and that ToEE was the last semi-decent release should give it a try and get the tolerance factor prepared, it is something too munch on. I won't play it a second time, but I will definitely finish it.
EDIT: It has the D&D feeling, unlike DDO. So to any D&D fan, they changed and twist a few rules, but overall, it keep a D&D feeling.
EDIT2: As for a rate, I would give it a 7/10...and I am a bit harsh. Maybe it deserve a little higher. Peoples who rate it lower prolly grant more importance to "what make average games" and too little to "what make a D&D game". They did a good job and give that D&D feeling, they respect the world, the rules, the feeling...If you are a D&D fan of the computers games for a long time, arm yourself with tolerance and enjoy...if you are a newcomer, it seem unlikely that this game will be for you.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
If it wasn't for the fact that im enjoying the story, I probably wouldn't be playing this, at least until they get a few big patches out the door. Now the game does look nice and most of the time in a wilderness setting I can maintain 30 FPS, but once I hit a city or there are a bunch of people on the screen the FPS drops to 10-20 or even below. There is plenty of detail, but like Shae said its either fairly repetitive (the skins for barrels and chests, etc, seem to be exactly the same so far).
The voice acting is a nice touch and so far I think it adds a very nice touch to the game. Again like Shae said during the cut scenes the textures are low quality and I can see some tearing; the voice acting is what saves it here.
Besides the actual in game problems, I have read about issues with the packaging of the game. The LE editions are supposed to have a cloth map and spiral bound manual/artbook. I have read of many cases where there is a paper map and a ten page manual, no artbook or cloth map. Even the basic edition I bought is pretty sad compared to what the first NWN came like. Im looking in my original box right now and the basic NWN came with a nice cloth map, a shortcut/spell booklet, and an almost 200 page spiral bound manual. Today I opened the dvd version of NWN2 and it came with the disc in a cheap paper sleeve and a cheap manual. Not that I really blame the developers for this part, doesnt Atari handle the packaging?
So far I would rate this a 6/10. The gameplay is clunky but the graphics look fairly nice with a sometimes VERY poor framerate. The story so far has actually pulled me in and made me want to play. The presentation box wise was pretty poor. On the plus side the dev's had a patch out on release day I believe to correct some problems with the camera (still pretty clunky), so maybe thats a good sign that patches will come quickly and correct some of the many problems.
hello timmy.... never winter nights 2 is a mmorpg
never winter nights 1 is a action-rpg diablo-type
never winter nights 2 will transform into mmorpg jus like dungeons and dragons online
Which FF Character Are You?
Now, I come to your adventure that you run for your buddies and I aquire anything, anything at all, even if my position changes in my save file, I am no longer in sync with my independantly saved character file on the servers.
How could they even hope know whether I moved, looted, quested, anything and it was not a hack?
Years, and I do mean years ago, with a borderland ansi c builder I could open my doom save game in hex format. Now I did this before everyone and their pet sheep decided to actually build a program around what I and many others did manually (im an old coder) we altered ...(edited: I removed what we did cuz I should not say
Now I am sure it is much harder today, we are talking almost what...16 years later.. database keys and encryption and all but the simply fact that the 2 files, mine saved offline and thiers saved online will not match leaves me wondering how they can enforce no hacking.
Blizzard with the Diablo series realized that characters saved locally could not play with characters that were always saved on their servers.
A locally saved character file that can be altered outside the knowledge of the online game servers can not be verified to have been legitimately created.
There must always be some type of internet connection to the game server about your character file even when you think you are playing standalone or the prevention of hacks will be an interesting task indeed.
Let me explain this better
Asume that you play two diferent online NWN2 modules
1. Persistant World called "Walker the Cormyr ranger"
2. Mini adventure you downloaded from nwn vault called "Rattraps deadly dungeons"
No1 is runned from server in Munich agriculture university, while no2 you run from your (or buddies comp)
Now you played no1 for a month and have character level 10 , you press "export my character key" play some more , reach lvl 11 and log out.
Now you want to play "Rattraps deadly dungeons" with your buddy. You start the game and chose the character that you saved locally and start playing. You reach lvl 20 in 2 minutes and get the "sword of insanely easy slaying of everything"...wow!
You log back to no1 and find that your character is the same as it was when you left - level 11 with crappy sword.
So you see , it depends on the module you play. And cheating is near to impossible or very possible - depending on server...
People always wondered about that in NWN1. You can enter the module and DM can weawe his magic wand and *pop* you are level 20 with 20 mil gold. But what is it good when you can use it only on local server allowed games ...
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
First off you must understand that I expected this game to litteraly be "one to rule them all" ... well it isnt
In graphic department it is almost good but not awsome - but comes with insanely demanding engine (think eq2)
- good news is that you can scale effects down , and you will not miss that much. Also for some strange reason game works better on worse computers ?!
Camera control is simply horrible , and the thing people are not writting about - the walls in dungeons are not getting transparent, so they constantly block your wiew
Companions have the poorest AI in the world, and so do the monsters.
Disapointing. So why play it then?
When NWN1 came out it had its share of problems too. And ironically the camera problem is exactly the same.
And still 6 years from now it is best sold PC game of all times, with largest community in the world.
Although we all expected NWN2 to blow nwn1 out of the room. Well that didnt happen. But still it is NWN2 and it is bringing LOT OF IMPROVEMENTS
When you play NWN2 you can clearly see the vast potential in hand of MODers. I am sure in one month from now when mods start coming out , the game will be insane. That said , i belive NWN2 tends to gravitate towards single player rather than mp.
But in sp it is king. I can not remember rpg that locked me down to the pc like this since Baldurs Gate, or Kotor
D&D 3.5 rules are excelently implemented to the point i might say the best implementation of D&D on PC ever take that DDO boyz) if you like D&D - there is no way in world you shold miss this game!
If you like PC rpg games this is excelent game , however if you want hack and slash you better skip this game.
Again , i cannot comment on MP - we will just have to wait and see
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
My worry is that because the system specs are so high, the MP community will be fairly small, and this will have a real detrimental impact on that side of the game. NWN was primarily a phenomenon due to the polayer-made MP modules and such, and if not that many people can run the game well, that kind of phenomenon developing here is much less likely.
Many people complain that the hardware demands of this product are too high and even their Machine configurations match them, they get too low frame rate and many bugs like interface prevent a smooth experience.
Just try before you buy
A lot of this has been mentioned before, but after playing it over the last couple days, i can say that my main gripes are:
Camera control. I love moving the mouse to the edges of the screen to rotate the camera, but in NWN2 it is too slow. Way too slow. Way, way too slow. In the first NWN you could adjust the sensitivity so that merely "tapping" the edge of the screen with the cursor would spin the camera 180 degrees around your character. They need to implement this asap. Holding down the middle mouse button to rotate the camera is extremely clumsy. I have had to resort to binding camera control to wasd (and i hate wasd).
Graphics. The graphics are good but do not live up to the system requirements. Like someone else said, particle effects look great but everything else is average. I think the character models are below average. Character animations are clumsy, ackward, jerky, and unnatural.
The interface. I feel that NWN1 had a clean, polished, minimalist interface. Not so much with NWN2. There doesn't appear to be a lot of aesthetic/visual consistency between windows. There is a LOT of wasted space between text that blocks the main view. I miss the narrow, monochromatic black and tan/gold interface from NWN1. I miss the main menu with your character portrait. I don't like the buttons in the bottom left of the screen.
All in all, i'm having a hard time staying focused on this game. Once i load up and get going in NWN2, i immediately start to think about all the little things in NWN1 that i took for granted. And then i realize that i'd rather be spending my time playing the first one.
half of max. For some reason the game automatically sets the view
distance to max, this causes the game to chug like a mofo. I lowered it
from 300 to about 250 and noticed a huge improvement, I was able to
turn on a bunch more stuff and the view distance is still pretty good.
If the story is good I will play it, but not until I have done a lot of stuff in GW: nightfall.
Strange that it sounds like Nightfall has better storytelling than what people are saying NWN2 has. Or at least maybe just technically better?
But Jeff Grub did write the Nightfall storyline, old school baby, yeah.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
Good the rest I don't really care about. It amazes me when people complain about graphics and then say BG was a better game or whatever because the graphics on NWN2 are sub-par or whatever.
NWN1 camera bugged me too, I wasn't expecting super smooth gameplay, but it sounds like the henchies are more fleshed out and that the story is at least good.
For real time play I would never consider playing NWN2 over a a game like GW but I like the pause and do stuff gameplay of BG and NWN. Especially BG as NWN was frankly way too easy and far less tactical.
D&D is a fine system but , even though I have the entirety of the original Monster manual 2 commited to memeory, its not something I get really jazzed about. Monster Manual 2 was good bathroom reading. I like the Guild Wars system better actually for a CRPG so NWN2 was a bit of a side thing what with NF out 3 days earlier. Which is strange since usually the online systems are worse.
Either way I have read literally 100s and 100s of fantasy books and I approach RPGs the same way, decent plot with stuff to do that gets me involved and I will like it. It'll be a nice diversion once I get aroudn to it. As long as the technical issues aren't just plain frustrating.
hello timmy.... never winter nights 2 is a mmorpg
never winter nights 1 is a action-rpg diablo-type
never winter nights 2 will transform into mmorpg jus like dungeons and dragons online
t will transform into an MMO just like DDO? Well that's certainly disappointing!
Play as your fav retro characters: cnd-online.net. My site: www.lysle.net. Blog: creatingaworld.blogspot.com.
The druid is freaking awesome spell wise. nothing cooler then a beaver running around screaming die.
haven't been able to craft anything yet but it looks promising.
and everyone who says the hardware is to high you're full of crap.
I've got a 3gz plane jane pentium and a 6600gt with 1gb ram and it runs fine on medium/high settings.